Wednesday, April 2, 2014

9 Happy Years

Last year I posted this about our wedding anniversary, so this year I thought, since this is our 9 year anniversary I would write 9 things why I our marriage works.

But first, this is one of my absolute favorite photos from our wedding.

1. Faith

When we got engaged we discussed Mr. converting to the Catholic faith, but decided that we were going to wait till after we got married so that we could go through the process together. So we're in a meeting with our priest and he asks us when do you want to get married? (our choice was going to be before Lent because you can't get married during and Mr. didn't want to wait those 40 days to get married). So I'm about to tell him our date of January 29th or February 5th, and Mr. blurts out that he wants to go through the process of converting before we get married, say what?! It turned out to be a wonderful experience with my Dad being his sponsor.

I won't go into preachy mode, but it was important to us for our kids to get baptized. I think our religion molds our children to who they are going to be, always having Jesus in their heart, keeping the light within them lite for others to see and spread the word and message.

2. We can have fun doing absolutely anything like taking a 1400 mile East Coast road trip with no music (Washington D.C to Vermont and back with stops in NYC and Philly)

Fact: Since Mr. and I have met we have never listened to anything on the radio, I think the total amount of time we've listened to the radio while in the car together is probably less then 10 minutes. We'll occasionally want the other to hear a favorite song, etc. But even then we don't listen to the whole song. Now when we get in the car if the radio is on, it just feels weird.

You should try it for one car trip, it really gets you talking and being able to be in silence with your own thoughts and really enjoy the scenery of where you are going.

3. We do little things that we're not asked to do, but do anyway because we know it's going to make the other happy.

Mr. is fixing the squeaky swing set at our park because it was really bothering me every time I pushed Baby Fox in it.

I'm making dinner while doing a workout video. See my feet down there, can't stop 'em. I want to feed my family, but also want to workout, so why not do both.

4.When we do travel it's best if I drive, and that we have a GPS with us this is me driving when we were in Barbados

This is me driving on our trip from number 1.

And the GPS we had to wait for an extra hour to get, putting us on the road much later then we anticipated. Yep that was before our phones had GPS, seems crazy now (wait I still don't have that), but this thing literally saved our marraige! I had printed out directions to all of our locations, I know I printed out driving directions from Washington D.C. to Vermont!

My favorite part of this shirt? The polka dot underlay, yep it came that way, cool huh?

I'd like to point out that Baby Fox picked out my toe nail polish and even helped me take the old polish off and put the new polish on

My dad happened to be over picking up Baby Fox and I insisted he get in a picture with me. And yes he just dresses like this everyday, he's retired and wears clothes like he still works. Guess old habits are hard to break. He's really involved with Church, he probably had a church thing yesterday morning.

Baby Fox wanted in on the action too, am I a lucky girl or what?

Mr. has his music writing (when he's done writing his current song, he said I could post it here, get excited!) and his choir stuff.

I asked Mr. about the man in the back with the patch on his eye, and he told me that he's always had the patch on his eye...

6. Raising our Children

We are almost always on the same page.

Discipline for example: This is the one and only tantrum Baby Fox has ever thrown, and when we did it, we laughed at him and took pictures. He realized that it wasn't working and promptly stopped crying and came to give us a hug.

I believe he was crying because he wanted a grape and we didn't have any, something silly like that.

His first time out

He kept turning off the lights in the kitchen while I was trying to make dinner

Manners is really important to us, he says please and thank you, says excuse me when he wants to talk and we're talking. Sometimes people say, wow he's so polite and we take that as a compliment to us, that is how we raise him to respect others and in return they will respect him.

7. Mostly we make the most of our time together and have a ton of fun!

8. We do fun things for just us, without the kids.

Date Nights

Weekends Away

9. Family is EVERYTHING

Our family is important to us and we try to see them every chance we get.

Most of my cousins with their kids

Making sure Baby Fox gets time with his Great Grandmother before she passed away

Cousins getting together for Grandma, one of her favorite days, all of her grandchildren and great grandchildren in one place.

Flying to Chicago to see my cousin get married (I'm 22 weeks pregnant)

Or driving over a hour away for some cousin time

These are just some of the reasons our marriage works for us. You know you've been married a long time when you have a song and dance where we can get a task done each taking on tasks that need to happen without actually telling the other person what you're doing. LIke in the kitchen we can just get stuff done, each doing what they're good at and in 5 minutes everything is done and we still haven't said a word to each other. I can't imagine spending my days with anyone else, and am excited for what the future holds. Hopefully lots of traveling!